Can These Daily Meds Give You Dementia?

Is your antihistamine bad news for your brain? Regularly taking a certain class of over-the-counter or prescription drugs might increase your risk for developing dementia down the line, finds a new study from the University of Washington, Seattle.

In the study, people who popped anticholinergic meds—including some kinds of antihistamines, cold medicine, sleep aids, and antidepressants—daily for over 3 years were 10 percent more likely to receive a dementia diagnosis during the follow up of 7-plus years than those who didn’t use the pills.

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Anticholinergic meds block a neurotransmitter called acetylcholine—which has been linked to cognitive processing—from binding to its receptors in the brain. That’s how it causes the short-term fuzzy-mind effects, like impaired memory and attention. But the researchers aren’t sure how this actually contributes to the long-term dementia risk.

“It’s possible that long-term use of these medications leads to changes in the brain similar to those seen with Alzheimer’s disease, such as neuritic plaques and neurofibrillary tangles,” says study coauthor Sascha Dublin, M.D., Ph.D.

Ask your doctor or pharmacist whether the medications you take are anticholinergic. The findings of this study—along with prior supporting research—are strong enough to suggest that you should talk to your doc about stopping these meds, Dr. Dublin says.

Of course, you should never stop taking a drug suddenly. But it might be a good idea to discuss your concerns with your doctor, and ask if there are any alternatives that you could be taking that aren’t part of the anticholinergic class of meds.

For example, antihistamines used for allergies such as diphenhydramine (Benadryl) and chlorpheniramine (Chlor-Tabs) are anticholinergic medications. But newer antihistamines such as loratadine (Claritin) and cetirizine (Zyrtec) can treat allergy symptoms without anticholinergic effects, she adds.

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